Innovation Inc. says it can bring him back to full humanity again.
It sounds too good to be true. A dream he’d long given up on, when even freedom seemed out of his reach.
He had to cast off flights of fancy like that and accept the truth of his circumstances, if he wanted to change them.
He had discarded that dream years ago, laid to rest beside his innocence.
Now, Innovation Inc. claims the ability to grant it. If he is willing.
When he negotiated the price of his freedom, he hadn’t dreamed that his bargain would earn him any more than that.
All he’d asked for was shelter, and safe passage to it. Transportation and asylum, for himself and one. Not even true freedom, really, simply freedom from UrbanShade.
This? This hasn’t been within the realm of possibilities to consider.
And surely, he’s willing?
It would mean returning to a lab again.
It would mean exposure. It would mean touch.
It would mean stares, clinical and invasive.
It would mean harsh lights in his eyes, blinding him, hurting him.
It would mean surrender, his body laid out like a sacrifice to be bled under the knives of faceless surgeons.
He’d almost certainly be bound. Even knowing what they were doing, even knowing he’d asked for this, that he’d wanted it of them, wouldn’t be enough to keep him from struggling once the memories overtook him. And they would. And he knew that whatever sleep they tried to fill his lungs or veins with wouldn’t work.
He hisses, scathing in the face of his own fear, teeth bared in an open-mouthed snarl.
(Open-mouthed, because grinding his teeth doesn’t really…work, without molars, and he’s tasted his own blood more than enough for a lifetime.)
(Yet another thing that could change for the better, if only he just—)
It would be worth it, he tells himself. The pain and dread and terror and horror and helplessness would be worth it.
It would be worth it, to be human, again.
(He must accept the truth of his circumstances, if he wants to change them.)
…the truth is, he’s grown to rely on this body.
Eyes that weren’t inhibited by the darkness with which he hid his plans from his captors.
Scales and scutes and chitinous shell that protected his skin from assault.
Blubber that kept him alive when food and warmth grew scarce.
Nares that scented any disturbance in air or water with deadly precision.
Ampullae, speckling his face, alerting him to the constant electromagnetic changes within the Hadal Blacksite as the building shifted around him and intruders encroached on his territory.
Lateral lines, running invisible down his sides, sensing movement as his closed ears sensed sound.
Whiskery barbels, drooping from just above his mouth, involuntarily detecting awareness that his other senses sometimes took longer to process.
Mass, and weight, and the might they brought with them. Strength.
Height. A tail that coiled and climbed and grounded his balance.
Claws. Prying the heavy doors of his prison apart. Forcing acknowledgement of the injustice done to him.
(Those damned, wretched gills.)
Can he afford to lose these advantages?
Is he safe enough, now? Is his liberty sure?
Can he survive without them?
…does he know how to live, without them?
What would it take, to learn again?
This is the body that carried a friend and ally to safety.
His human form couldn’t fight. Not in the way he’d needed to. Not in the way he ended up fighting, on the day he’d seized his fate and laid his innocence to rest.
He was human when his autonomy had been taken from him.
It was this body, this marred, twisted, repulsive body, that enabled him to take it back. To reach through the misery of his damned existence and grasp onto a hope that he hadn’t dared to put a name to.
In his human mind, had he crafted his escape.
Through this body, had he guaranteed it.
He hates that he’d been changed. He’s always hated that he’d been changed.
He’d thought, back then, that he’d hated what he’d been changed into.
Maybe he had, at the time. Maybe he still does.
It is with distress, that he begins to realize that it’s not that simple anymore.
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